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Heavy Goods

Note : Anyone who reads this and starts to foam at the mouth at any perceived ‘anti-cyclist’ stance, “never been on a bike in his life, wouldn’t understand, etc, etc”, should really read the previous post before continuing.

In further cycle campaign based lunacy, it would appear that “cyclists” have been busy lobbying the EU

Legislation requiring hauliers to fit the 450,000 lorries in Britain with sensors and emergency braking systems is being examined in Brussels following intensive lobbying by relatives of a young woman killed when she was dragged under the wheels of a HGV

Bummer. And what was this poor young woman doing at the time ?

… as it turned without the driver noticing her in the vehicle’s “blind spot”.

Oh I see.

It is – of course – a tragedy when someone is killed, and more tragic if that death could have been avoided. It is an even greater tragedy when the death could so easily have been avoided by the recently deceased.

By, y’know, not riding down the side of a lorry, in its blind spot. Were I a coroner, I’d write that up as suicide.

Still, at least the bereaved family didn’t immediately blame the driver, who could have done absolutely nothing to prevent the incident.

They have a five point action plan – and yes, of course, this will involve spending some of your money. And some of other people’s money that will eventually end up costing you more of yours. Natch.

1 Cyclist-awareness training for drivers

All city lorry drivers should be have ongoing cycle-awareness training, including on-bike experience.

2 Drivers must take more responsibility

Authorities must recognise driver responsibility for doing everything practical to reduce risks. Blaming a ‘blind spot’ should be an admission of guilt.

3 Safer design for London lorries

Lorries designed for off-road use should be taken off city streets. The best mirrors, cameras and sensors should be fitted as standard.

4 Higher standards from lorry operators

Quality-assurance schemes such as London’s Freight Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) should be mandatory, and the police encouraged to crack down on rogue operators.

5 More responsible procurement

Companies must only buy haulage services from reputable firms, with government taking a lead in encouraging best practice.

Red tape, bureaucracy, legislation, quangos, enforcement. And not one bit of it the responsibility of the actual cyclist. Hmm. In fairness, at the bottom of their action plan is this further point that they haven’t even graced with a number

Plus: Better education for cyclists

Cyclists must be given the most accurate and up-to-date information on riding safely around lorries.

Let me save you the first five and completely implement the unnumbered, insignificant ‘plus’ : Don’t. If you are the sort of person who requires guidance as to when and how it is safe to cycle around a lorry, frankly, it is not safe for you to cycle around a lorry, so just don’t.

The life you save may be your own.

Legislation, Legislation, Legislation

Of course, it is to be understood that the grieving relatives of the recently deceased often make hysterical, emotive and frankly unreasonable demands of the world, been there, done that.

Campaigners called for hauliers to be compelled to buy equipment which alerts drivers if a cyclist pulls up alongside them and brings the vehicle to an automatic halt if there is a risk of a collision.

But as we’re all smart monkeys, we know this, and so there’s no danger of this stupidity – which strikes me as potentially dangerous in itself – passing through the EU as actual legislation is there ?

The Independent understands that Brussels will table changes to pan-European safety legislation by August, while an existing directive requiring all new HGVs to be fitted with cyclist sensors and automatic braking will come into force in 2013.

Oh, fucksticks.

And will this be expensive ?

The haulage industry said it was committed to improving safety for cyclists, pointing out that freight operators had spent £78m since 2008 on retro-fitting mirrors to their fleets.

Yes. If it cost 78M just to fit some mirrors, I think we can probably safely assume that fitting some crazy futuristic cyclist seeking radar and autopilot equipment will be hideously, outrageously, expensive.

Mirror, Mirror, on the, er, Junction. WTF ?

Until today, I had never heard of a Trixi MIrror, then I came across this petition while digging through a twitter search.

We the undersigned call upon the Mayor, as Chair of TfL, and the Members of the Greater London Authority to:

– Immediately install “Trixi” mirrors at every A Road junction, starting with the A503, Camden Road, then move on to B Roads. Let’s have London-wide safety for our cyclists, not a patchwork cover.

Have you guessed what a Trixi Mirror is yet ? (Perhaps this is common knowledge?) Here’s a pic and an apposite quote from the Guardian, which illustrate it nicely.

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is seeking government approval to place mirrors at traffic lights to prevent collisions by revealing cyclists and pedestrians hidden in lorries’ blind spots.

So again, lots of lovely taxpayer lolly to be spent on letting drivers know when people are in their blind spots.

Once more with feeling

Look at that picture. Look at the cycle lane. See where the cyclist has had to ride to get to that forward box at the junction ? Yup, right through the HGV’s blind spot. This is stupid. And the solution to this problem is not to add the mirror to make it safe to do so.

Far cheaper option is simply to remove the priority boxes, lose the mirrors and for cyclists who are stuck behind a lorry or bus to just wait there and deal with it.

Look ma, I just saved a bucketload of other peoples’ money. Oh, and some lives.Note: Anyone feeling the urge to rush to the comments and leave a snarky message about traffic fumes, don’t bother, I ride bus lanes. If it bothers you, don’t cycle on the roads. Or buy a mask. Or get off and walk around on the pavement.

I will simply reiterate what I said last time. Your safety on a bicycle is your responsibility. You take your life in your hands. If you rely on things like trixy mirrors, putative cyborg lorry systems, other people’s awareness of you or any other road features to keep you safe, you will be dead soon. And it will be largely your own fault.

Wise, wise words :

Because if you’ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe — to see you, and to give a fuck — you’ve already blown it.Neal Stephenson – Zodiac

Riding Blind

For my first post in a long long time, I’m going to talk about some things I have rarely mentioned since I started this blog. Those being cycling and blindness.

There is a reason – apart from whimsy – why this blog is called “Blind Cyclists’ Union”. I am a long time cyclist, and I am also ‘blind’. You’ll note that I’ve put quotes around that ‘blind’ there, because, apparently, ‘blind’ is a spectrum rather than a binary condition.

Well, it is according to those who are responsible for labelling the disabled in order to better pigeon-hole and patronise them – as the DWP (and they should know!) tells us :

Most people who are registered blind have some degree of residual vision.

Yeah, it came as a surprise to me as well, but there you go, in order to be registered blind, you don’t actually have to be.

So the question arises : “How blind ?”. And the answer is, frankly, fucked if I know. I mean how am I supposed to measure it ? Blind enough to be registered, that’s for sure, which is moire than blind enough to fail the mandatory DVLA sight test by a wide margin. It used to be a red letter day if I managed to guess the second line on an eye chart. It’s not correctable, and it obviously degrades with age like everybody else’s. There are additional complications around dazzling from bright lights, ‘floaters’ and various stuff.

Whatever. Anyway, 99.9% of the time this is utterly and profoundly irrelevant. I only bring it up because of a recent spate of spew from the cycling lobby which has particularly boiled my piss.

On Yer Bike

As I mentioned above, I am also a cyclist. I have been since I was a child. I ride on the roads. Less so these days – in my late 30s I trust my reactions less than I used to – but still reasonably regularly. Shock horror, eh ?

Anyway, there’s the background on my end, lets get on with the overheated urine.

Fuck Off Jon Snow

Initially my ire was aroused by this piece in the Indy, whereby Jon (C4 News Snow), the CTC and the Indy have all started a campaign to “Save our cyclists”.

Here’s a gem

The campaign aims to protect cyclists from lorries and buses, which account for a disproportionate number of the 230 cyclists killed or seriously injured every month on Britain’s roads.

HGVs and buses are the largest vehicles on the roads, and have by far the most limited fields of view. You are likely to be KSId if one drives over you, that’s for sure. Then again, they are the most visible – and most visibly dangerous – vehicles on the road as well, so it should be a surprise that they are involved with so many cycle deaths. But somehow I don’t think that’s the point that the Indy is trying to make.

Ambush Predator flags up that on the same day the AA launched a cycling safety campaign by giving away a huge number of free helmets and hi vis tabards. I’d have taken them up on that like a shot, free stuff – what’s not to like ?

Well according to the Evening Standard article AP links to and to it’s author’s blog a number of cyclists did indeed take the huff. The published comments are sourced directly from Twitter – of course – here’s a gem :

@RossLydall Maybe cyclists could reciprocate by giving out free eye-glasses and copies of the Highway Code to drivers.

Wait A Mo, Did You Say On The Roads ?

@geographyjim’s timeline contains various other tweets insinuating that all cycle deaths are the fault of poor drivers, criminals in charge of HGVs and the like. I am living proof that this is simply not true.

I’ve been riding around on the roads – busy roads mind you – with lorries and buses for more than twenty years, and I am not dead. Here is a full list of all the accidents I have had in that time involving other vehicles.

Cluster Bomb

Age around 13, riding down my own street my chain came off, looked down at chain, became one with parked red Renault 5 stuffing face through rear driver side light cluster. Ouch. Knocked on owners door, paid for damage – well, my rightly angry dad paid, and it took many weeks of car washing and the like to pay it off. Spent about an hour picking glass and plastic out of face. Entirely my fault.

Junction Dysfunction

Age maybe 15, Riding home from school along busy A road, approaching minor junction with cul-de-sac, judged safe to cross junction as nose to tail traffic blocking vehicle egress from junction. Driver of white Ford Sierra decides to poke his nose out anyway, not paying attention, hits me. Arrive at road surface via bounce off red Ford Transit van on my right who was also crossing junction. Minor scrapes to me + van. Front teeth removed from Sierra driver by owner of red Transit, front bumper of Sierra ripped free by cycle pedal. Fault ? 50/50. He wasn’t looking, but his idiot behaviour was entirely predictable. I should have been watching him, not judging simply by traffic conditions. Surprised ? Transit driver was, he entirely blamed Sierra man. And he made him pay for the dent.

Rib ‘n’ Saucy

Age 30+, proceeding at speed (35 MPH) down steep hill through small light industrial area, vehicle (silver two door hatchback of some kind) reverses out of parking area in front of light industrial unit. Doesn’t see me. Taking evasive action I go wide and hit the kerbstone on the other side of the hill resulting in spectacular and very long distance pile up. Vehicle drives off, almost certainly never saw me. I arrive at destination 30 miles later bruised and bloodied. Subsequently it turns out that I have bust almost the ribs down the right side of my body and a couple on the left. That made the two mile stretch of disused rail track fun.

Fault ? Mine entirely. I know the road, I was going way to fast for the hazard level and not paying enough attention.

That’s all of them.

Dead Hippy Axle Dressing

So, if all of these cycling KSIs can be blamed on drivers, someone needs to tell me how come I – with my ‘low vision’/’partial/restricted sight’/blindness or whatever we’re calling it this week – have been managing to cycle around on busy roads and in bus lanes, four lane roundabouts with HGVs, hordes of zombie commuters and distracted school run mums with overloaded cars full of screaming brats and have only had three accidents in over twenty years, all of which were entirely or partially my fault ?

Surely by now I should have been murdered by one of these feckless criminal zombie drivers the cycling lobby are so keen to blame for all the accidents ? But I haven’t.

Situational Awareness

Because if you’ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe — to see you, and to give a fuck — you’ve already blown it.Neal Stephenson – Zodiac

The above is from some exposition in the cited novel about cycling in a city, they are words I have – literally – lived by.

If you are on a bicycle on the road it is your responsibility to pay attention to your safety. It is not a safe fluffy environment for cyclists, get used to it. Never assume that someone can see you, never put yourself in a position where they need to in order for you to keep your life. Situational awareness and anticipation skills can be developed to the point where even a blindy like me can ride around on the road without being killed or even seriously injured. If you cycle about the place with the arrogance of a self righteous hippy :

Jamie Crick, a presenter on Classic FM, also contacted The Independent to register his support. He said: “My producer and I both cycle into Classic FM and have been swapping terror stories. The lack of provision for cyclists is woeful in London.

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In all likelihood I’ll eventually get round to a rather tedious occasional series on the utter stupidity that goes into planning cycle lanes. But to be going on with

This high quality cycle lane on High Road Leyton helpfully guides blind cyclists across the junction with Capworth Street, and leads in a straight line to the dropped kerb and the tactile surface on the pavement on the far side.

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I hadn’t intended this blog’s inaugural post to be about cycling, I had in fact simply intended to post a short piece comparing Jacqui Smith MP with a lady’s front bottom, in case anyone had forgotten in all the recent excitement. That would have set the tone quite nicely, I felt.

But it came to pass that while I was conducting my daily work displacement exercise of trawling through Blogs What I Like, my eye was drawn to a post by The Landed Underclass about the sabotage of a bicycle race (and a race for charidee at that) in Perthshire, Bonnie Scotland.

LU, a chap with whom I regularly find myself in harrumphing agreement seems to share with other chaps (perhaps of a certain age) a particular disdain for any cyclist who chooses to wear modern fabrics – particularly if they also happen to be brightly coloured fabrics, and the French. I shall begrudge him neither of these, and he makes several excellent points regarding cyclists in general :

“I have always held in contempt those who use cycling as a kind of social rounders bat with which morally to beat those using other kinds of transport. …[A]nd despised those who dressed up as iced lollies and rode five abreast in the road, in order to annoy car drivers.”

Indeed. I am a keen cyclist, I don’t own a car, and I feel that a useful pre-emptive approach to any future potential energy/climate crises is that anyone who plays ‘greener than thou’ should be rendered for bio-diesel. This having the benefits not only of removing their entire future carbon footprint and silencing their plaintive whining, but of keeping the traffic flowing. It’s really a win win.

And certainly riding in such a way as to obviously be impeding traffic on purpose is just plain rude. I’m not sure that either of those is justification for this though :

The Independent reports that the people of Perthshire, having had quite enough of their rural lives being disrupted by competitive, self-advertising modern cyclists, have taken to the application of tin-tacks to selected roads, with what seems to have been a satisfactorily high return on investment.

I must take issue with this. Lets have a look at what some of the good burghers of Perthshire have been telling auntie beeb

“These aren’t the people of Perthshire who are doing this, these are one or two, a group maybe, who have taken extreme action, and it is extreme action and not typical of the friendly welcome that you receive in this part of Scotland.”

“This attack on the Etape Caledonia makes me feel sorry for all the people who have trained for months, in all good faith, to take part – only to have their safety and enjoyment sullied by a spiteful minority who are selfish enough to grudge their community the chance to boost the local economy for the good of all.”

“This disruption has embarrassed myself and anyone who has a conscience. It is ridiculous to think that the closure of a road for just three hours on one day of the year can give these people the right to protest with such callous disregard for the wider aims of the race (ie the support of a very worthwhile charity), not to mention the benefits to the local economy and the reputation of us all.”

So clearly not everyone in Perthshire is a drooling anti cycling saboteur. Not everyone can manage to get their heads round hosting an event once a year, either. Some of the more pointlessly angry and self righteous residents have even staged protests against the horror of the three hour road closure that accompanies the event. For instance :

Paul Bright from Fortingall said: “How refreshing to see that the public has taken direct action to halt an unwanted event forced on them by the local county council.

“Whilst I cannot possibly condone the causing of damage and possible injuries to cyclists I am sure that this was the only avenue of protest left to the people of the Pitlochry/Aberfeldy area who did not wish this race to occur.

I am fucking sure it wasn’t the only avenue of protest left at all. It was a spiteful and cowardly act of violence against the local community, and the cyclists in the race (many from the local community) perpetrated by a mindless idiot without the wherewithal, courage or support to manage any other kind of protest.

It was also enormously self defeating, causing the roads to remain closed for an additional hour. And it was the road closures that were causing people to get so mithered, after all :

“These closures have the effect of isolating whole communities from access to services both mundane and emergency … ”

Which is a pretty pathetic rationalisation. It’s no particular hardship to lack access to “mundane” services for three predictable hours each year, and anyone who really, honestly, believed that the emergency services wouldn’t be able to get through should they deem it necessary would likely be to stupid to breathe without a machine. So there must be something else then. Ah yes :

“… and from the ability to exercise their religious faith by travelling to the local churches.”

That’s right, good ladies and gents of Perthshire, it’s more important that Paul Bright from Fortingall and his fellow bronze age cannibal zombie cultists get to drive to a temple of their supposedly omnipresent deity WITHOUT FAIL than it is for you have a nice afternoon out once a year and boost your economy.

And it’s more important than the physical well being of three and half thousand cyclists.

And it’s more important than raising money to provide nurses to care for people with cancer.